


Not A Night at the Opera

by vanillafluffy



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Harm to Animals, No Romance, Not Canon Compliant, Riots, bloodsport, different backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 04:36:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21112742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: For the prompt, "they run a sanctuary for pit-bulls". The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know how 'they' got into it and where the dogs came from and away I went.Here's an alternate universe take on how Bane meets Talia and her activism changes his life for the better.





	Not A Night at the Opera

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cozy_coffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cozy_coffee/gifts).

> A belated happy birthday to Cozy_Coffee, who has some great prompts.

At a diner called the Cup and Spoon, the ex-con with the name Carl stitched on the breast of his uniform shirt wipes down tables and washes dishes. Patrons glance at him, seeing a big man who moves with deliberation and speak with a slight accent. They look no further.

The two young women chatting at table six take no notice of the busboy either, who is going around to tables between the lunch and dinner rush, replacing empty condiment bottles and refilling salt and pepper shakers. They’re well-dressed twenty-somethings, shopping bags on the chairs beside them, enjoying coffee after a pleasant day among the boutiques. Their conversation, though, is less than carefree.

“God, Talia, your dad’s going to kill you if he finds out what you’re up to!” She shivers. “Or worse yet, he’ll cut off your allowance!”

“One, he’s not going to find out, and two, let him. I have enough money from Mom’s side of the family--he can’t control me that way. And it’s not as if I didn’t give him a chance to make things right. If he’d break the lease on the building they’re using--”

“They’d find another building,” the first young woman says. “Tal, it’s dangerous! They’re bad people and what you want to do would cost them a lot of money. They’re not going to like that.”

“Selina, you worry too much! Look, if my father won’t do anything to break up that fight ring, I will. You can’t stop me.” 

The speaker’s voice rings with passion, but the attendant’s attention has been caught by the words ‘fight ring’. In another lifetime, he participated in cage matches under the name Bane, building a reputation for himself before being side-lined by injuries. A part of him misses that glory. Can he recapture it here, in Gotham? Can he persuade this girl to lead him to the organizers and get himself onto the card?

“Fine--but I’m not going to help you.” Selina shakes her tawny mane and waves her spoon at her friend. “I should tell your dad what you’re up to.”

“You wouldn’t.”

She sighs and sips her coffee. “Please, don’t go. Look, I know it’s awful, and I don’t approve of it either, but if you go charging in there and try to bust the place up, you’re going to get hurt or worse. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you! Come over to my place--we can drink wine and gossip about who Bruce Wayne is doing this season.” Carl suppresses a snort. Gotham’s most prominent son’s well-publicized peccadilloes approach the status of urban legend. One or two of them may be true, but it seems Bruce has only to be seen in the same room as a woman to be linked with her.

“I can’t, sweetie. If I turn my back on this, I won’t be able to live with myself.”

Bane applies himself methodically to his tasks, waiting for the moment when Selina excuses herself to the restroom. Then he approaches the table.

“Miss, I couldn’t help overhearing. You said there’s an illegal fight ring operating here in Gotham?”

Talia looks startled to have been overheard, although she’d been speaking at a conversational level. “Yes, in the old Bamberger’s department store building.” She eyes him keenly. “Are you an animal lover?”

“An animal lover?” he repeats, nonplussed.

“Because the last I heard, there were going to be thirty or forty dogs there, tearing each other apart so assholes can bet on them. Murdering dogs for sport!” She glares at him.

He struggles to conceal his disappointment. “I thought you meant a bare-knuckle fight,” he says glumly. “Not dogs.”

Talia snorts. “If it was men beating up other men, I wouldn’t care. At least they can make the choice to be there. But dogs who’ve spent most of their lives in cages being taught to fight and hate? Who are disposable commodities to the men betting on them? No! I’m going to shut them down.”

“I believe you,” he answers. Her words resonate within him. Most of his life has been spent under supervision, first in the orphanage, then reform school and later, jail. Fighting, whether literally or metaphorically has been his life. “But your friend is right. It’s a very dangerous thing to do, to go in there and try to break it up. Certainly you should not attempt it alone.”

Her chin comes up as she looks at him. She’s cute, although a bit young for his taste. Her dark hair is cut in a flattering bob, she’s dressed nicely--probably expensively, although ladies fashions aren’t something he knows much about. She’s admitted to her friend that money isn’t an issue for her.

“Then come with me!” she challenges him. “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

Bane gives the idea moment to simmer. She’s an heiress, about to go do something really stupid. There are a few ways this could go. He can save her from her folly, and maybe collect a reward…or he can use her as leverage. He can take her hostage and demands a ransom. If her family is rich enough, he could parley her idiotic quest into enough money to go somewhere warm and tropical, some place where a half-million dollars American will last him the rest of his life. It’s certainly tempting.

“If I help you, what do I get out of it?” he asks, not wanting to sound too eager.

“You can’t just do a good deed?” Talia is reproving. “What do you want?”

The trouble with kidnapping is, it’s a federal crime, which is more trouble than he’s looking for. Besides, where the hell would he keep her, his rented-by-the-week room? That doesn’t mean he can’t double-dip, though. Take money from her, then turn her in to her family, getting payment from them for his trouble, of course. It may not keep him forever, but compared to what he makes at this dump, it’s an attractive option.

“Two thousand dollars,” he says boldly.

She stares at him. “You’re serious?”

“You’re asking me to walk into a building full of armed men and break up their party while you do what, set loose a bunch of dogs? That’s a high-risk proposition, and I value my life.”

“Who said anything about armed men?”

“Little lady, if you think all those men have in their pockets are their fat wallets, you’re criminally naive. They may be there for bloodsport, but I guarantee there’s a lot of money at stake. And where there’s a lot of money, there are a lot of guns.”

“You sound like you know something about it.”

“Bare-knuckle fighting, yes. The same principle--battling in a cage to amuse jaded fools.”

“And you’re willing to risk getting shot for two thousand dollars?” She’s incredulous.

“Believe me, I’ve done dumber things for less money.” And did the time for it, but he elects not to go into detail about that. He’s at least a decade older than she is, and they were rough years. The spoon he was born with was plastic, not silver.

Talia pulls a notepad out of her purse and scribbles an address. “Meet me there at ten o’clock tonight,” she tells him. “I’ll have your money for you. What’s your name?”

“You can call me Bane.” The name he was born with, Kyrill, was Americanized to Carl, but the name he fought under was his choice. That’s who he is.

Selina is returning from the restroom. He hastily pockets the note. When the other girl sits down, he addresses her. “Would you like a refill, miss?”

“No, thanks.” He smiles politely and moves away, hearing the conversation resume. “Really, honey, you need to rethink this--”

When Bane’s shift is over, he visits a terminal at the public library, and learns that the Bamberger building is owned by businessman Ra’s Al Ghul. A quick search turns up pictures of his daughter, Talia, making her debut and being seen at various functions among Gotham’s elite.

Again, the notion of ransoming her crosses his mind. But no--even if he magically came up with a place to stash her, he already has a record. If he did the deed and things went wrong, he’d never see the light of day again, and that’s a much less acceptable risk than the possibility of getting shot at. That’s a shame, because her family seems to be loaded with a capital ‘L’.

The address Talia gave him is two blocks from the Bamberger building, which is a sensible distance. When his old van chugs up to the rendezvous spot, she’s already waiting, although it’s only 9:40. 

“Good evening, Mr. Bane,” she greets him as she clambers into the passenger seat.

“Just Bane. Do you have my money?” He waits as she fumbles inside her jacket. “What’s the plan?” he asks after she’s handed him a bank envelope full of bills.

“We go in like high rollers, I’ll excuse myself to the ladies room and duck backstage while you cause a diversion out front.”

“The ladies room?” he asks in disbelief. “You think there’s going to be a powder room? It’s an old, deserted building--they’re probably pissing in the elevator shaft. Try again.”

She doesn’t like that. “Well, I--”

“And when you ‘duck backstage’, then what? If you start letting dogs loose at random, it’ll be a fucking massacre. They’re not pets--they’ll take a chunk out of you as soon as anybody. Is that what you want? For some deranged pit bull to eat your face?”

Talia looks out the window, marked with arcs of dust where the windshield wipers have plowed a path. “I have to do something,” she says quietly. “I can’t let that go on.”

“Why not? Just because it’s your daddy’s building doesn’t make it your concern.”

She doesn’t answer for a moment. “A few months ago, Sadie went missing. My dog,” she explains. “The sweetest little King Charles spaniel. A couple weeks later, the police found a site in the Narrows that was used to train fighting dogs. They found Sadie and identified her by her microchip.” Her voice trembles. “She’d been ripped apart. The detective I talked to said that’s how they train fighting dogs to kill, by starting them on little dogs that can’t fight back.”

Bane scrubs his face with his hands. “What exactly are you planning to do if you do get back where the dogs are?”

Triumphantly, she pulls a flask out of her jacket. “There’s enough vodka and rohypnol in here to knock out a hundred dogs. I’ll spike the water supply--”

“First of all, do you think the trainers aren’t going to notice you snooping around the cages? And second, they’re not going to be giving the dogs food or water right before a fight. You’re better off trying to knock out the trainers--except they’re going to notice if everybody start falling over asleep.”

“Are you always so helpful?” she demands.

“Kid, we’re going to be outnumbered by so much it’s ridiculous, and if you want my help with this, you’re going to have to come up with a better plan than powdering your nose!”

“Can I trust you, Bane?”

“Trust me?” Bane lets out a bark of laughter. “Now you think to ask that? Little lady, you have no idea who I am or what I’m capable of. And yet here you are, meeting me in one of the shadiest districts in town, with a wad of money, climbing into my van of your own free will--” She’s eyeing him with some trepidation. Good. Silly girl. 

“Well then, who are you? And what are you capable of?” she wants to know, sounding more curious than scared.

“Among other things, I once killed a man with my bare hands.” He shrugs. “I told you, I used to be a fighter--I was a big deal for a few years. Then, there was an underground cage match…as you say, we both chose to be there, we knew the risks--but the cops didn’t see it that way. Everything before that was small potatoes--car theft, robbing a guy making a night deposit--but killing someone accidentally, oh no, I had to pay for that.”

“Oh.” She’s chewing her lower lip. “So you’re probably going to hate the real plan.”

“Tell me.” he growls.

“I need to get pictures of the fighting, of the dogs, people making bets--I need proof. Then I can call in the cop on the case and they can swoop in and break it up. I’ve spent months tracking the ring down, and here they are, practically in my backyard. I have to do this!”

“And all this nonsense about sneaking backstage and drugging everyone?”

“I need to get pictures--and if I can drug anyone--people or dogs, it’ll be that much less for the cops to contend with when they come in.”

She’s right--he doesn’t like it. Partly because of his innate distrust of law enforcement, but also because there are way too many what-ifs. “Do you know for sure this cop of yours is on duty tonight? How long is it going to take for him to get a warrant? For that matter, do you even know if you can get a cell signal in there? What happens if you can’t get ahold of anybody? And I’m sure you’ve already got a lawyer on retainer. What about me? If I get busted one more time, I’m in the soup.”

“Of course I’d have representation for you, too. You’re helping me, aren’t you? And I talked to Detective Blake a couple hours ago. He knows about the fight, but since it’s on private property, his hands are tied--he can’t go in without proof of illegal acts.”

“Why isn’t he going in instead of you?”

“He’s worried they’d make him as a cop. He said nobody would suspect me.”

“He’s crazy,” Bane says in disbelief. “He thought it was a good idea for an unarmed college girl to single-handedly stroll into a group of tough guys with blood in their eye?”

“Oh, I told him I had a bodyguard,” She seems unconcerned. ”You certainly look the part.”

He’s not in the habit of hitting women--usually they take one look at him and keep their distance--but in her case, he’d consider making an exception. He wonders if anyone has ever turned this frustrating female over and smacked her ass til she couldn’t sit down. “Your father--”

“To hell with my father!” She pouts and scowls at the same time, looking for all the world like a petulant six-year old. “My dad doesn’t give a damn about me. He might send a lawyer to bail me out, but I’m not counting on it; I’ve already got someone lined up. When I was fourteen? I staged my own kidnapping, and you know what he did? Absolutely nothing. He was away at some stupid golf tournament and all the ransom calls went to his voice mail. All he cares about his money and impressing his cronies and I’m just an afterthought.”

He sighs. Good thing he wasn’t planning an abduction; it sounds like that would be a losing proposition. It doesn’t sound like there’s a potential reward in the offing, either. Still, Talia doesn’t seem to have had any more of a family than he did--maybe less.

“What about your mother?”

“I was seven when she died,” She sounds forlorn. “She went in for a Brazilian butt lift--it’s cosmetic surgery--and she had some kind of allergic reaction and died.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he is. She may be spoiled, but with a home life like that, he’s not surprised. A picture forms in his mind of a vain and hedonistic couple, their lonely daughter with only a pet dog for company.

“What about you?” she asks. “Are you in touch with your folks?”

This isn’t something he usually talks about, but if he can distract her for long enough, maybe the fight will break up and they can call it a night. “I grew up in Eastern Europe. My mother was given a bad transfusion when she had her gall-bladdeer out. I was four or five when she died…I hardly remember her, just little scraps of things, like her singing or my father bringing her plums. He was caught stealing from a construction site and died in prison. I was nine. I ended up in an orphanage, where I was adopted two years later by an American couple.”

“Were they nice?” she wants to know. They’d wanted a companion for their son and because they were compassionate, liberal and had money, had traveled all the way to Santa Prisca to find one.

Bane raises his hands, palms up. Who can say? “They tried.” 

At almost-twelve, uprooted to a new country, he’d been sly and defiant, ready to bully his younger step-brother and manipulate his hapless step-parents for whatever he could get. He can’t imagine feeling more out of place than he did in their affluent home. By fourteen, he’d done two months in juvie for the first time. At sixteen, his step-parents had died suddenly and his eighteenth birthday was literally spent in court on the robbery charge. His so-called guardian had been less than sympathetic and the lawyer he’d sent gave only a perfunctory defense.

“Our mothers both died for no good reason and our dads are selfish assholes,” Talia reflects. “It sounds like we have a lot in common.” 

He wants to retort that she should speak for herself, he loved his dad, but Bane has to admit, he’d done his son no favors--teaching him bad habits and getting himself locked up like that. “How much time have you spent in jail?” he inquires.

“I don’t suppose you count being sent away to boarding school…?”

Ha. The orphanage in Santa Prisca had been no-frills. They ate, slept, did chores…education wasn’t strongly emphasized in the curriculum, but he’d studied on his own, certain that if he learned enough that one day he’d figure out a way to have everything he wanted. “Boarding school? Did you have to do farm work? Did they lecture you on God’s Plan and your humble place in the world?”

“We had chapel twice a week,” she says, shaking her head. “That was bad enough. Farm work? Seriously?”

“Quite seriously. The orphanage was operated by a convent, which had hectares of farmland…we were expected to plant and weed and harvest the crops--partially to feed us, partially to teach us to work, but also as a way for the convent to raise funds to pay taxes and clothe us and whatever else.” 

There was nothing frivilous about those years--the sisters had been devoted to self-denial--he library, which had been included with the property when it was left to the Order, was the only diversion. He’d greatly missed television at first--his father had gotten a set from somewhere--and they hadn’t even had a soccer ball to kick around. Bane recalls watching a boy his own age ride past the fields on a bicycle, and how awed and envious he’d been. 

Talia shudders. “I can’t even imagine.”

“No, you can’t,” he agrees. “Any more than I can imagine being a rich girl at boarding school.”

She looks at him silently for a long moment. “I’m tired of everyone defining me as nothing more than a spoiled rich girl,” she says finally. “I mean, I know I have money, and I’ve had a lot of advantages, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything worthwhile. That’s what I’m trying to do here. Come on, let’s go stop a dog fight.”

He’s already taken her money, and he’s not about to let her go in there by herself. With all her ideals, she has no idea how brutal the world can be. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says as he opens the van’s door.

It isn’t until they’re approaching the lighted loading dock that Bane gets a clear look at what Talia is wearing. Under a black and yellow satin team jacket--the Gotham Rogues--she’s poured into a black leather jumpsuit. He’s not sure if that’s her idea of the right costume for a clandestine mission or if she’s trying to distract the opposition by looking the part of a clueless rich girl. With his newfound knowledge of her, either of those options seems entirely possible.

He, meanwhile, is wearing what he regards as normal clothes: jeans, tee shirt and battered work-boots with an old leather jacket to insulate him from the chill of the evening. It isn’t a fashion statement--it remains to be seem if he looks like the kind of bodyguard a broad like this would have. If they’re rejected, he’ll give her a ride out of this neighborhood--but keep the money.

“What do you want?” asks the gorilla leaning against the door.

Bane starts to say that they’re looking for the party, but Talia interrupts with, “Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?”

It must be the right code phrase, because the gorilla merely grunts. “Hundred bucks each.” Talia pulls out a roll of bills--is she an idiot, waving that kind of cash around here?!--and hands it over. The gorilla pockets it, then opens the door. “Enjoy yourselves.

The room they enter has a few people standing around in little groups. There’s a brightly lit space further on, many voices echoing…they emerge into what must have been the main floor of the store. Crudely made stands surround the cage--someone has enclosed the area defined by four support pillars with chain-link to a height of eight feet and wrapped it with razor wire. There’s a narrow alley of sorts that disappears into what’s probably a storage area where the pens are.

The night’s entertainment is already underway. There’s blood spatter on the floor of the cage as well as a dead dog, blood still pooling around it. Talia has her phone out, filming. As they watch, a pit-bull races out of the alley and attacks the carcass. A moment later, another pit-bull bursts in and the two begin fighting over the remains.

It’s sickening. Bane watches impassively, but he’s disgusted. This is not sport.

The crowd is shouting--cheering on their favorite, roaring as the blood flows. Finally, one of the dogs is weakened enough that the other one rips its throat out.

The onlookers start collecting their winnings. Talia’s camera swivels to capture the action. She’s very pale, but still has her mind on her mission. An attendant enters the cage with a pole and a noose and catches the winner, dragging it back toward the kennels. A moment later, he comes back and retrieves the bodies of the other two dogs. Okay, so they’ve seen a fight and witnessed illegal gambling--hopefully they can get the hell out of here soon.

A long-haired guy who looks like every biker Bane ever met in the yard at Blackgate walks up to them. “No filming,” he says sternly, glaring at Talia, who slides the phone into her pocket. “You’re gonna have to erase that.”

She’s pouting, the picture of a spoiled brat, then she pulls the phone out and thrusts it into Bane’s hand. “Hold on to that for me, will you, B? I need to go powder my nose.” She shoves past the biker, whose attention is focused on the small, shiny object in Bane’s hand. 

“It’s locked. Don’t look at me, I don’t know her password.” He does his best to sound exasperated--it isn’t much of an act--but he’s noticed something he hopes the biker hasn’t. The phone she’d been filming with was in a blue case. This one is silvery and covered in sparkly rhinestones. She must have brought a spare phone as a decoy and substituted it. “Don’t worry, when she gets back, I’ll see to it that gets erased. She doesn’t have a clue, that’s all.”

“What’s the matter, you couldn’t find a baby-sitter?” the biker smirks. “Yeah, fix it. I’m gonna have my eye on you two. I haven’t seen you here before.”

Bane snorts. “This isn’t my first cage match,” he says with perfect honesty. “Her? She likes to think she’s tough. She’ll learn.”

The biker steps away to haul off two patrons who are getting into it with each other, and Bane takes a deep breath. He doesn’t dare leave this spot--it’s where Talia will look for him--but he’s worried by the way the incident has called attention to them. Please let Talia be calling her cop, not skulking around the pens like a leather-wrapped chew toy.

Feedback whines, and an amplified voice says, “Settle down gentlemen and ladies. Our next event will start in just a moment.”

There are a few women present, he notices, looking more closely around the crowd. Of the roughly eighty people sitting or standing around the cage, there are maybe a dozen women, a couple of them in evening gowns like it’s a night at the opera. Most of them look like they might be biker chicks themselves. The men also run the gamut from business-types in expensive suits to blue jeans. Together, they have one thing in common, their love of savagery.

“Now for the next entertainment of the night,” the voice intones.

A red rubber ball bounces down the alley, followed by a dog chasing it. Unlike the earlier fighters, this dog isn’t a pit-bull or any of the breeds lauded for toughness. It’s big and yellow--a Labrador? and it pursues the ball with gusto. It catches up to it and snatches it up, shaking its head triumphantly. 

The crowd murmurs with hushed expectation. Bane has a very bad feeling; this dog is no fighter. It’s some family’s pet, it belongs in a suburban yard with a while picket fence and a swing-set. Not here.

At the sound of people, the yellow dog drops the ball and runs up to the fence. Its tail is wagging--it likes people, but it’s never met people like these before. It looks confused by the tone of their voices…after a moment, Yellow starts sniffing at the blood pooled around the arena. Its tail stops wagging. It whines unhappily.

There’s a dark streak of motion down the alley and another dog enters.

This is no pet. No pit-bull, either, unless it was raised on steroids because it’s huge. Yellow looks like a puppy beside it. It’s inky black with yellow eyes, ears and tail cropped short. Yellow gives a little ‘let’s-play’ bounce, but the black dog snarls and lunges toward him. There’s a yelp and futile snap from Yellow dog. Bane once saw a picture of a big jungle cat with enormous fluffy feet captioned, “Murder Paws.”. In this case, it’s more like Murder Jaws. Yellow doesn’t stand a chance.

The spectators laugh as Yellow dog, terrified by the other dog’s onslaught, soils itself. Murder Jaws has literally scared the shit out of it.

It isn’t funny. It’s the least funny thing he’s ever seen. Bane’s conscious mind switches off, and he simply reacts, peeling off his jacket and throwing it up to cover the razor wire. Work boots aren’t the ideal thing to climb chain-link in, but he’s got enough upper-body strength to manage. He rolls himself over the barricade and into the cage. 

He grabs Murder Jaws by its back legs, lifting them off the floor. The dog releases its prey, which cowers in a corner. 

“Bad dog!” he snarls at Murder Jaws who thrashes to get free.

Great, now what is he supposed to do? His spontaneous attempt to rescue Yellow is liable to get him torn up by the black dog, and none of this bunch is likely to try and stop it.

Well, as long as its legs are in the air, it can’t turn around and take a chunk out of him. He’ll keep doing what he’s doing and hope to hell the cops show up soon. The crowd, sensing his dilemma, catcalls with derision, placing odds on how soon the dog will get loose to attack him.

Never, is his preference, but Murder Jaws is heavy and his exertions mean Bane has to move along with him. After what feels like several minutes of struggling, his foot slips on something--blood or crap, and he goes down to one knee, his grip relaxing--only momentarily, but long enough for the black dog to yank free.

Bane manages to get to his feet as the dog springs toward him, jaws slavering. He draws back his fist, timing his punch as Murder Jaws leaps. He’s not in the habit of hitting dogs any more than he is of hitting women--but these are extraordinary circumstances.

The dog’s jaws snap shut as his fist lands and it stands there wobbling.

Yellow cringes over, looking up at him tentatively. Bane reaches out and scratches its ears, glaring at the crowd, which sounds distinctly ugly. Then Yellow jumps back at Murder Jaws lunges at him again. 

Another well-timed punch, and this time, the dog drops to the floor. 

The crowd boos.

A man comes down the alley. He’s in good shape. Bane evaluates him and decides he’s going to get his cage match after all. The way the guy moves…yeah, he’s a fighter. 

“What the hell?” the newcomer says, looking at the black dog prone on the floor. “You knocked out Anubis?” 

“He was trying to eat me.” Bane rotates his shoulders, loosening up, trying to be aware of the slick spots on the floor. “Take him and go.”

“I can’t let you bust up these people’s fun. I’ve got a job to do.”

“I hope they’re paying you extra.”

They trade punches. Bane was right; the guy knows how to fight. “You a pro? Bare-knuckle, MMA, what?” he asks conversationally.

“Light-heavyweight. Name’s Anvil.”

“I’m Bane.”

Anvil starts. Clearly, he recognizes the name, which is gratifying. He may be gone, but he hasn’t been forgotten. “No shit. I heard you were pretty good.”

“Judge for yourself.”

The fight gets serious then. Anvil is no pushover. He knows how to hit, and Bane is willing to admit he hasn’t been working out anywhere near as often as he should. But he’s not giving up, it’s that simple. He’s never been a quitter, and he hopes to run the clock down til Talia’s detective shows up. 

He’s collected a split lip and some sore ribs, but the blood is singing in his veins. He feels more alive than he has in years.

Anvil does some fancy footwork, then Murder Jaws stumbles to his feet and lunges at him. 

Damn dog. Bane grabs his back legs again. “Bad dog!” he bellows, smacking the dog upside the head.

Murder Jaws lets go and slinks over to the far side of the fence when Bane releases him. Anvil stares after the dog in disbelief. When he turns back toward Bane, he gets a fist in the face and crumples.

On the other side of the fence, the crowd is rioting. They’re pissed--at him, at the interruption of their sport--or maybe because they’re hair-triggered individuals anyway. At any rate, at the moment, Bane feels safer inside the cage than he would outside of it.

Yellow crawls across to Murder Jaws and nuzzles him. Bane sighs, ready to go to the rescue of the amiable dog, but Murder Jaws looks too dazed to object or argue. Yellow’s tail is wagging again.

“People!” the announcer projects. “We’re not finished. Release the hounds!”

Bane braces himself for another battle. God know how many more dogs they have back there.

Nothing happens.

“I said, ‘Send in the hounds!’,” bellows the announcer. “What the fuck, Ernesto? Send in the rest of the fucking dogs! Ernesto!”

It isn’t until later that Bane finds out that Ernesto is snoring in the back, and so is his helper, thanks to Talia’s potent cocktail. Meanwhile, he decides to take his chances backstage, because he’d rather face dogs than the seething mob beyond the fence--especially when the shooting starts.

“Come on!” he calls to Yellow, who gets up and walks over to him. Murder Jaws follows Yellow, but keeps his distance from Bane. He sniffs at Anvil, but jerks away when Bane says, “Leave it!”

He hooks an arm under Anvil and hauls him to his feet. The other man blinks at him dumbly, but his head swivels toward the crowd and and with Bane’s help, his staggers down the alley toward the backstage area.

The narrow run leads to a set of double doors, and beyond that is a scene of frenzied activity. Men in uniforms and flak vests mill around. Dogs are barking hysterically. Paramedics work over two men on stretchers. He freezes as guns swing his way.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! He’s with me!” Talia hollers. She’s standing beside a man in a raincoat over a tactical vest. Her detective, Bane presumes. The cops stand down.

“They’re going in with tear gas,” the detective explains as more gunfire sounds from the main area. “This has gone way past a simple disorderly conduct bust.”

Still supporting Anvil, Bane gets the hell out of the doorway. Right behind him is Yellow--happy, tail wagging. Murder Jaws is crouched, almost velcro’ed to his side. “Somebody needs to look at this guy,” he says to the detective. “It’s cool, he’s not a troublemaker. Give him a pass.”

The detective--Blake, as Talia introduces him--doesn’t seem convinced, but Bane isn’t about to sell out a fellow fighter who just picked the wrong fight. “We’ll see. Set him down over by the medics.” 

There are loud bangs, different from the pop of small arms fire, and the yells die away.

“Good work,” Bane tells Talia. “You got your film and they busted the dog fighters. What are you gone to do now, go to Disney World?”

“What happened to you?” she gasps in alarm. “You’re all bloody!”

“I created a distraction, just like you asked. By the way, could you ask your friends--” with a side-long look at the police still backstage “--to get my jacket while they’re rounding up evidence? It’s hooked over the razor-wire at the top of the cage.”

“I’ll buy you another jacket.”

“That’s very nice of you, but my car keys are in that one, along with your phone.”

“It was an old phone. Are you all right?”

“I’m glad I have tomorrow off,” he says, trying to shrug it off. But it’s true--as much as he hurts now, Bane knows it’ll be even worse tomorrow.

He stays out of the way of the cops, watches as the paramedics diagnose a possible concussion and take Anvil away with the others--it’s at that point that Talia reveals they’d found her, confiscated her flask and consumed its contents--they’re going to need their stomach contents pumped out.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Detective Blake says adamantly. “Maybe those guys had roofies for the dogs and mixed things up. You had nothing to do with that, do you read me?”

“Do about what?” Talia asks with a bright smile.

Bane is happy to find a sturdy cooler he can sit down on. He’s that damn tired. Murder Jaws seems to have adopted him. He doesn’t look at anyone else, much less try to bite. Yellow keeps them company. Somewhere, his family is probably worried about him, he’ll track them down somehow….

He waits, dogs on either side of him, unconcerned until the animal rescue squad shows up and starts discussing how little space they have at the shelter and basically gets ready to start euthanizing the leftover fighters on the spot. Oh hell no. 

It’s the last thing he wants to do, but he hasn’t gone through all this just to get a bunch of dogs killed. As Talia has said all along, it wasn’t their choice to be there. So Bane pulls his phone from his pants pocket and calls his step-brother for the first time in years. He’s the only one who might be able to help him with this particular problem.

“Hey, Carl--how the hell are you?”

“Uh, I’m kind of in a little jam….” He starts at the beginning, how he’d been recruited less then twelve hours ago by a girl he never saw before for an insane mission. “I need a place where I can keep dogs,” he says finally. “Not sure how many--a dozen, maybe? Can you help?”

At least this time, he isn’t asking for bail money.

“I’ll need to make a couple calls. Sit tight and let me see what I can do.”

“Thanks, man, I really appreciate it.”

“No problem, brother.“

He doesn’t go back to work at the restaurant; there’s too much else going on. His step-brother’s phone calls have paid off handsomely. Animal Control agrees to a stay of execution. Within forty-eight hours, Bane has taken possession of a ten-acre property, fenced in, where his new dogs can roam safely while they’re learning to be regular dogs again. He doesn’t know much about dog training, but his step-brother has hired one of the best-known dog psychologists on the planet to come out and work with him and the nine surviving dogs.

Yellow, whose name turns out to be Archie, is reunited with his people, a young couple who’d left him in their backyard and discovered he was missing an hour later.

Murder Jaws, who is now just Jaws, has turned out to be pretty good company, since Bane’s broken him of his tendency to snap at strange dogs or people.

His step-brother comes out to tour the dog ranch. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since shortly after Bane got out of Blackgate. Apparently, there are no hard feelings about his aloofness--he gets a big smile and a warm hug and stops thinking ‘step’ and just thinks ‘brother’.

As if by osmosis, Talia and her friend Selina drop by while they’re chatting about old times. (Funny, how Bane has more good memories than he thought.) He introduces Talia, who takes the bit in her teeth, conversationally speaking.

“Of course, we’ve met,” Talia dimples prettily. “Last New Year’s Eve at Mrs. Tate’s soiree.”

“That’s right. You were a vision in midnight blue.”

“My goodness, you remember that? And this is my friend, Selina Kyle.”

“It’s a pleasure to met you, Mr. Wayne.”

“Bruce, please. It’s a a pleasure to meet you, too, Selina…”

Talia draws Bane aside. “I don’t want to c-block her,” she confides. “Selina’s been wanting to meet him for ages. Why didn’t you tell me Bruce Wayne was your step-brother?”

“It never came up. Besides, what difference would it have made? We didn’t need him to stop the fight ring--although, I’ve got to admit, he really came though, finding a place where I could keep the dogs. This was a boarding kennel until they went under during the recession. I even have room for expansion.”

“Is this what you’re going to be doing now? Rehab?”

He nods. “It turns out there was money in trust for me. I’m not as wealthy as Bruce, by any means, but I can afford to run a rescue operation for former fighters. The legal team for Wayne Enterprises is putting together the paperwork to get Dog Town incorporated as a non-profit.”

“That’s fantastic!” Talia beams at him. It’s wonderfully ironic--he’d contemplated kidnapping her for a half-million dollars, and now, thanks to her, he has more than that and a whole new future.

“It’s all thanks to you. I hadn’t talked to Bruce in years. If you hadn’t gotten me involved in your crazy undercover mission, I’d still be doing dishes and living in a fourth-floor walk-up next to the train tracks and sharing a bathroom with the entire floor. Now I’ve got a place of my own and the dogs--” He pauses, aware that he’s on the verge of getting maudlin. “I’ve started running in the morning, again” he says, changing the subject. “The dogs take turns running with me. And I’m setting up a workout room.”

“Great. I’m glad you’re okay, Bane. I was really worried about you.”

“It looked worse than it was. How are you? How are things with you and that detective?”

“John? Oh, he’s good. That reminds me, I’m supposed to have dinner with him. Selina! We have to go, I need to get ready for my date!”

“You go ahead, Talia,” Bruce calls back. “I can give her a ride.”

Talia gives him a hug and departs. Bruce gives him a hug and leaves with Selina shortly afterward. She’s smiling delightedly as he assists her into the Lamborghini.

Jaws ambles up to him and regards him gravely. Bane scratches his chest and the big dog relaxes. “Good boy,” Bane tells him. His nubbin of a tail wags.

The sense of purpose he has now is like the way he used to feel when he was in training for a big fight. He likes caring for the dogs, helping them have normal lives. For the first time that he can remember, he feels needed. No matter what the mission statement for Dog Town is, Bane has his own theories about who is rehabilitating who.

...


End file.
